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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513302">Prideful Remembrance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrose_juri/pseuds/blackrose_juri'>blackrose_juri</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The People's Tomb Fic Jam Prompts [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Camilla is wholesome, Coronabeth Tridentarius (mentioned), Gen, Judith Deuteros (mentioned), Palamedes Sextus (mentioned), The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Pride, but also Hope</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:21:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>950</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513302</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrose_juri/pseuds/blackrose_juri</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Camilla Hect always remembers Palamedes Sextus. Not even his self-destruction can take that away. It’s a tragedy, really, as eloquently defined as in one of his ancient novels—and yet, it isn’t the sting of tragedy that undoes her, but the swell of a much warmer emotion that shouldn’t be there, bubbling in the ocean of her.</p>
<p>Post-GtN.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Camilla Hect &amp; Palamedes Sextus, Camilla Hect/Palamedes Sextus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The People's Tomb Fic Jam Prompts [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1938241</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Prideful Remembrance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey everyone! This dramatic little piece was inspired by The People's Tomb fic jam. Everyone has been digging into the angst pretty hard, so I thought I'd make my contribution. Also, I adore Camilla Hect as a character, and I've been dying to write her, so here goes that. Hope you all enjoy! :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s a subtle, invasive sort of feeling, and it starts to wear on Camilla’s defenses after six days. </p>
<p>She’s a motionless ocean, as always; the sediment of her diffuses and scatters into near-imperceptible particles, sinks to the bottom to be held down by the immense pressure behind her murky stare, and her surface betrays little disturbance.</p>
<p>Something, however, bubbles beneath. </p>
<p>Something swells, and after six days, it breaches. </p>
<p>Six days—</p>
<p>One day spent being collected, repaired, restored, with a bitter, bothersome pang as a set of unfamiliar hands sets her body back in order. There’s no disorientation, only stinging lucidity; disorientation is a luxury she doesn’t have. It’s her first thought, after waking, that those hands expending thanergy over her bruised torso are the wrong hands, and the horror begins to creep and claw at her, that time is being wasted. Still, it’s the remembrance that comes first, before the fear.</p>
<p>One day spent reeling, the inside of her a boiling reservoir as they insist she remain on the vessel, and she hides her panic with flexing fingers, a small part of her hoping they notice it in the twitching corner of her eye; something is missing, a piece of herself, and she needs to return to that awful house to find it, and the only thing she can <em>do</em> all day is remember. </p>
<p>One day spent concocting, persuading, storytelling, convincing them of the value of returning to the scene, even though they’ve thoroughly combed it for bodies already. She runs the tale back and forth to herself, silent, in the chamber she shares with the Tridentarius twin who pays her no mind, and she does not fumble as she makes her plea. She remembers him then, too, and wonders if her story would’ve made for good reading. </p>
<p>One day spent excavating, recalling layouts—where <em>this</em> room might’ve been in relation to <em>that</em> rubble, <em>that</em> bloodstain, <em>that</em> pile of osseus muck—and wishing that she’d been blessed with that touch that remembered the impossible details. She succeeds, however, despite the limits of her recollections; it takes all day, but she gathers the pieces that she finds, and she wonders if some of his crystalline memory has transferred onto her, after all. </p>
<p>One day spent cleaning and crafting, piecing together fragments, chips, dust. His remains are as scattered as the emotional particulate beneath her surface, and she wills her calloused, warrior’s fingers to repurpose their dexterities for a gentler, impossibly fragile purpose. She forces her giddy, nervous brain to kick up memories of his textbooks, and not even they can offer a proper methodology for gluing together ground pieces of skull, but she succeeds, again, driven by memory, and that subtle feeling bubbles with increased vigor.</p>
<p>And, at last, one day spent quietly fighting, pushing down this bubbling thing, this swell, this glow, this promiscuous warmth that comes in the aftermath of her success, of her tireless work.</p>
<p>It seems wholly wrong that she might cradle this intimate fragment of her necromancer’s skull and bubble over, that she might run her thumb over the dry bone and crusted glue that comprises her handiwork, and that the ocean of her might surface <em>pride</em>, of all things, in response. It swells and swells, and she presses and presses, but it’s the way it tugs at the corner of her lips that undoes her in the end, too relentless to stifle. </p>
<p>Is it even necessary to hide it? she wonders. </p>
<p>It certainly seems appropriate; no one on the whole of that affectless ship smiles, not ever. Not Judith, who hadn’t had much mirth in her to begin with, and not Coronabeth, who had once seemed incapable of losing her phosphorescence. </p>
<p>And certainly, Camilla herself has little reason to smile (perhaps less so than any of them, though that thought is selfish enough that she chides herself for it); there isn’t a world in which she should be in this position, holding the leftover bits of her necromancer—her friend, her partner, the rays beneath her surface—in her palm, which won’t even quiver, having neutered that reflex in her youth.</p>
<p>It should never have been her task to pick through his priceless brain matter with her bare hands, to touch her fingers to his naked bone and feel its porous texture. She should never have spent the night awake, knees huddled close to her chest in fetal tenderness as Coronabeth slept, staring at the wall until it disappeared, wondering if Palamedes Sextus—the smartest man, the stupidest man—was still <em>somewhere</em> in those four inches of skull, haunting it as a revenant.</p>
<p>She recognizes, staring at the dormant, skeletal relic on her bedside table, that it’s a tragedy, as eloquently defined as in one of his ancient novels. She knows that it’s the sliver of hope, however, and not the pain of missing him, that sharpens that tragedy like a knife; it’s the fragility of knowing that he <em>might</em> still be there, that there <em>might</em> be enough of him for his reckless fail-safe to work, that leaves her supine under that knife raised above her. </p>
<p>And yet—</p>
<p>And yet, on that sixth day, as Camilla Hect lifts and holds what was once Palamedes Sextus—what is still Palamedes Sextus—that insistent pride swells, and bubbles, and breaches the surface of her until she beams, lambent with girlish adoration and self-satisfaction, even as she aches somewhere underneath. </p>
<p>She’s his faithful cavalier, his dedicated arms, his true companion, and she always remembers him. </p>
<p>She’d remembered him well enough that she’d reconstructed him, molded his fragments into something, from nothing. </p>
<p>Now, all she has to do is trust that he remembers, too. </p>
<p>And Palamedes always remembers everything. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks so much for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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